


Deep Winter

by Annie17851



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Destiel only lightly implied, Future Fic, M/M, major character deaths in the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 06:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3109778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annie17851/pseuds/Annie17851
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years have passed since Dean and Sam died, but Castiel has something he has to take care of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Years have passed since Dean and Sam died, but Castiel has something he has to take care of.

Deep Winter

Castiel hated winter. So wet and cold, and really, he could be wherever he wanted to be. Someplace warm and sunny, for example. 

But he had already spent so many years here, so many winters in the small house he’d had built on the burned-out foundation of Bobby Singer’s home, that to be elsewhere might be unsettling. 

The Singer homestead had been deeded to the Winchester brothers, and Cas had taken possession, after. The property remained in the Winchester name to this day, and Castiel made sure to have just enough odd jobs to pay the taxes and the upkeep, and feed himself. 

And to take care of the car. 

He was cut off from his own home, from Heaven, punishment for always siding with the humans, he supposed. But he still had enough Grace to make him practically immortal. Heaven had made sure of that. Cut off from home and sentenced to live forever, without the possibly of ever going back. 

Castiel wasn't even sure how many years had passed since the two brothers had gone on to their final rest. They had fallen together, of course, and Castiel had not been there to help, had been off trying to find information to help them with this new, previously unknown creature. It had stopped the hunters, taken their hearts and left them lying cold in a canyon. When Castiel had finally found them, it was days too late, and the fact that the ex-angel had never managed to find the creature, to make it pay, shredded his psyche every day since then. Every, single day.

Castiel did hunt, once in a while, but mostly he spent his days in the little house, browsing through documents he had collected. Memorizing books he had found about the care and maintenance of Dean’s beloved Impala. He had built a shelter for the vehicle with his own hands. Mostly, it stayed right there, safe from the elements and the ravages of time. He would never let Dean’s Baby rust or fall apart, kept the engine in perfect condition, changed the oil and drained the gas tank once every two months, replacing it with fresh gas. As the years went on, Castiel was finding it harder and harder to obtain the right kind of fuel, and dreaded the day when he had gotten the last of it. Every morning, Cas would take Dean’s keys reverently from the beside table in his room and go out to the small, make-shift garage, to open the car door and lean in, just to start it. Just to hear that throaty sound echo off the thick wooden walls, to smell the pungent odor of the exhaust. 

Castiel would silently stand next to the raven-hued vehicle, letting it run for five minutes, listening to the satisfying growl of the engine, hoping that, somehow, Dean Winchester knew Baby was taken care of. Deciding what he was going to do today to fill the empty hours until tomorrow morning when he could start the car again. Double check all the warding symbols that covered the small building. 

One day a year, that one day, when he had lost both Dean and Sam, that dreadful anniversary that came around in the dead of winter. That was the day the car would be moved. Only then, and only a short distance.

That was today, and when Castiel rolled over in bed and saw the cold gray of the sky outside the bedroom window, he knew the universe mourned the loss of the Winchester brothers almost as much as he did. 

His small house only had three rooms; the bedroom, the combination living room/kitchenette (like the old motel rooms, and Castiel thought he had had it built this way unconsciously) and a tiny bathroom, just big enough for a sink, toilet and shower stall. 

The only source of heat was a big fireplace on one of the living room walls; the hot water was provided with a small basic water-heater. It was cold in the bedroom, and Castiel wrapped himself in a heavy blanket and hurried out to the fireplace to get the fire stoked up again into a bigger blaze.

Morning routine; bathroom, cup of tea, piece of toast. Normally, every other day of the year, he would dress quickly and head out to the Impala for the car’s daily work-out.

But not this day. This day he lingered over the meager breakfast, running back through his mind and replaying every day he could remember with the Winchesters, with Dean. Even the bad days. This was his exercise for remembering. It had been so many years, and Castiel wanted to remember, wanted to remember even the bad things. Needed to make sure he would never forget.

Of course, he had written everything down many years ago, in case his vessel’s human brain ever failed him. Of course he had, and if he ever started to forget, all he had to do was open the thick journal that sat right on the corner of his little table for two by the counter with the hot plate. 

He stopped thinking about these things when he began remembering his frantic search for Dean and Sam that last week. He would be thinking about that all his waking hours on this day, and he had to do the thing. The car. 

Losing his appetite, he dumped the tea down the drain and threw the remains of the toast outside for the winter birds. 

So then, dressed, keys in hand, steeled against the once-yearly onslaught of grief and guilt, Castiel, once Angel of the Lord, stepped out into the bitter mid-January air.

New snow had fallen overnight, about three inches of it and it looked like the sky was threatening even more soon. 

“Do your worst,” Cas said softly Heavenward, because he knew that three inches of soft snow was no challenge for the Impala. He trudged on through to the garage, pulling his coat a bit closer around him. He had always hated when his vessel was cold, but there was nothing to do about it. Today was the day. After, he could sit for hours in front of the fire and mourn, although the cold he would feel all day really had nothing to do with the weather. 

He pulled the garage door open and stood quietly for a few seconds, admiring the gleam of the car’s finish. The gleam he worked so hard to maintain. 

He entered and walked around the car slowly, running his glove-less hands over the cold metal smoothly, end to end, almost a caress. He made a circuit of the Impala twice, to make sure he saw no tiny dimples of imperfection that could turn to rust. He found a tiny white feather on the hood, and looked around curiously for the bird that could have left it, but the garage was empty. Castiel took this calling card as a good sign, and he leaned in the passenger side door and placed the feather in the glove compartment, beside Dean’s favorite gun, two ancient cell phones and some fake IDs that were soon going to be crumbling to dust. 

Inspection over, he glanced at the sigils on the walls once and then opened the driver’s side door.

This action, this actually getting in the car and sitting in the driver’s seat, always made Castiel’s human heart beat erratically, stirred something mournfully in the bit of Grace left to him. Cas closed the door carefully and then turned the key in the ignition, always worrying the car wouldn't start. Foolish doubt, since he started it every morning. But the radio had stopped working a while ago, and Castiel was still trying to figure that problem out. The tape player may have still been working, but all of Dean’s music tapes had disintegrated long ago, and Castiel had been unable to replace them. 

The car started up immediately, of course, like it always did, and Cas hesitated just a minute, hands on the steering wheel Dean had touched for so many years, eyes closed, trying to remember the smell. The leather, gunpowder, sometimes whiskey. But Cas could never quite get the smells right, and even the Impala didn't smell the same anymore, just smelled like cold and wood, from being in this garage so many years. 

Cas opened his eyes and put the Impala into reverse, backing out into the almost non-existent driveway so carefully, but, as predicted, the new-fallen snow was no match for the big car. 

Like he did every year on this day, Castiel drove the Impala cautiously around to the back of his small house. The two small piles of stones back there, marking the two graves, were eroded by years of weather into soft-edged colorless rocks, barely poking up out of the cold white blanket nature had provided today. Cas pulled the Impala to a slow, reverent stop next to them and turned off the engine, stepping out into the winter silence. The birds had taken his offering from breakfast and gone on their way, leaving Castiel to mourn in peace.

“Hello, Dean,” he forced out into the cold air. “Hello, Sam. I’m still here. I’m not sure how long they are going to make me stay. I hope, when they let me, I can find you. I’m still taking care of the Impala, Dean, I know you wouldn't want to see her rust away to nothing. The radio doesn't work anymore, but I’ll fix it, I’ll……” Cas stopped. Cas broke, tears starting to roll their chilly tracks down his face. 

“I want to come home!” He shouted desperately to the leaden sky, not getting an answer and not expecting one either. 

“I just want to go home,” he whispered to the two plots of ground at his feet. “I just want to go home and I pray that you are there waiting for me.”

Castiel swiped furiously at his face, berating himself for weakness, reminding himself that he was strong enough to wait them out, that he had things to do here. 

Years, maybe eons from now, the Earth would be dust and the Impala would be nothing but rust particles floating in the universe and then, maybe then, his family would let him come home. He could find Dean and Sam again.

 

The ex-Angel of the Lord climbed into his shiny, Earth-bound ebony chariot and drove it back to the garage, keeping it safe. For Dean.


End file.
